Deployments of our National Guard reserves affect our readiness at home.

Looming homeland security threats go way beyond terrorism. It’s inconceivable that Maine’s funding as a rural state, expecting an increase, has been so drastically cut. Is this because Sen. Collins tells the truth about both global warming and homeland security?

“We deposed 82 witnesses in committee, 300 more in closed session. My staff spent many months in Louisiana, reviewing 850,000 pages of material. We found a failure of leadership at every level,” according to the senator. She then provided a number of specific common sense solutions to improve homeland security, such as checking cargo containers for nukes before they leave foreign ports.

I recently had the extreme pleasure of serving on the Task Force to Examine Maine’s Homeland Security Needs. This bipartisan group of six legislators and five citizen representatives adopted a number of unanimous recommendations to better coordinate Maine’s state and local response systems. Most were immediately adopted as law by the Legislature. But much more is needed, at state and national levels.

After detection, public notification and emergency dispatch are needed within minutes, even seconds. The Cascadia Fault could release a mega-tsunami on Oregon within 15 minutes. Sudden dam ruptures, volcanic lahars off Mount Ranier, and tornadoes present similar imperatives. Terrorist chemical or nuclear attacks, even a chemical transport rollover, mandate instantaneous responses.

A nationwide system must be cobbled together from all our electronic marvels to warn citizens to turn on the radio or TV for detailed instructions. Communications systems are always overwhelmed in the initial stages of disasters by personal calls. The Maine Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Emergency Management Agency must be able to commandeer cell and satellite phones and computer systems for early use.

We will need national credentialing, ID systems, and training for all medical and other volunteers, dispatched formally, or co-opted when they happen to be in the vicinity. Medical strike teams, hospital-based or attached to Guard units, with national pre-credentialing are in the making – one right here in Maine.

By far the biggest threat to the homeland security of every nation is pandemic avian flu. If it jumps to humans, we will need a multitude of swift responses.

We will need a national plan for maintaining society and the economy, with distribution of necessities through barricades, if a very strict quarantine is needed. Medications will need to be made in large amounts for the strategic national stockpile so supplies are not manipulated by drug companies. We will need huge pre-planned patient care facilities for large numbers, and assume health care providers and all other support workers will also be sick.

A computer/video surveillance system, for the millions of shipping containers arriving daily, would allow virtual inspection of every container coming into the country. It could alarm if tampered with, and record all activity when doors are opened. Homebound disabled employees might monitor them, checking video against official logs of loading.

We must also accelerate the removal of all nuclear materials from Old Russia, and everywhere else. And, we must give serious consideration to how present and future deployments of our National Guard reserves and career military, in an increasingly dangerous world, affect our readiness at home.

Paul Averill Liebow, an ER physician at Eastern Maine Medical Center. is a member of the governor’s task force to examine Maine’s Homeland Security Needs.